Thursday, April 18, 2013

Also due for Tuesday's class: I need some evidence that you've thought about an approach to your "inflatable sculpture projection." That could be a written & typed paragraph detailing your idea -- any additional storyboards or sketches or mock-ups would be helpful as supporting material. But at least have a paragraph typed and printed. This is a recap of the shapes, and who has been assigned to which:

SAM'S "TRAVELER" PROFILE:
Diva & Chelsea

AMANDA'S "LENNY" PROFILE:
Pete & Alex

ANZA'S "TURKEY FOOT" (LOOKED MORE LIKE A PLANTAIN TO ME):
Alec & Matt

MOLLY'S BUST OF A BUST:
Katie & Henrik

There are two other shapes - a ghost shape and a twin pedestal shape - that will be assigned to folks who missed today's class.

If you want to review or dig deeper into any videos we looked at today for projection ideas, here's the playlist:

If the playhead is between the two clips, it will create the transition right at that point. If you select a whole clip, it will apply the transition to both ends of the clip. Once the transition has been created, you can doubleclick on the transition in the timeline, and adjust the duration (the parameters will appear in the "Viewer" window).

ALTERNATE TRANSITIONS AND EFFECTS FOR MULTIPLE VIDEO TRACKS:

You can also drag a new video track above the current video track. You can edit the opacity of the uppermost track by clicking on the "Toggle Clip Overlays" button at the bottom left of the timeline (it looks like a zigzag line). Once that button is clicked, you can use the pen tool (the last tool in the toolbar) to click on the line that appears at the top of your clips, and create point that can be dragged down or up to adjust the opacity of the clip at any point of its duration.

You can also composite two layers together, with a variety of effects similar to the layer effects in Photoshop, by right-clicking on the upper video layer, and selecting "Composite Mode" from the popup menu -- from there, you can choose from the listed composite effects.

VIDEO EFFECTS FOR A SINGLE VIDEO TRACK

There are a variety of video effects you can apply to a clip by selecting the clip, then going to Effects: Video Filters.

DE-LINKING AN IMPORTED VIDEO AND AUDIO TRACK

If you import a video clip, and the audio track is linked, when you move the video track along the timeline, the audio track will move along with it. To de-link the audio track, hit shift + L (or hit the "linked selection" button, the middle button to the top right of the timeline window). Then you can move, edit, delete or replace the audio track.

TEXT IN FCP:

In your "Browser" window, click on the "Effects" tab. Go to:
Video generators: Text
From which you can select a variety of text options. You can drag one of those text options into your timeline, where it will function like a video clip. Doubleclicking on the text clip on the timeline will open a dialog box in your viewer, from which you can type the text, select the font, size, etc. (click the "controls" tab in the viewer to access these parameters). You can adjust the duration and motion properties of the clip as well.

A summary of some strategies to change the meaning of the original clips:

Changing the audio -- either by using a different audio source, or by recording your own narration (which is obviously a very controlled way to shape the meaning of a clip).

Juxtaposing sources -- placing shots in different contexts so that they come together to tell a new story. People from one clip can be made to react to events happening in an entirely different clip. A shot of someone smiling, followed by a shot of a happy baby, has a very different effect than the same shot of someone smiling, followed by a shot of a murdered corpse.

Use of text -- the longer film we watched, "Phantom Limb," told the story of the filmmaker's relationship to his younger brother through text inserts.

An effective strategy can be to give objects and characters in a shot a different symbolic meaning than was originally intended. Think of the shots of the collapsing buildings in "Phantom Limb" -- because of the context that was laid out for the viewer, those buildings were stand-ins for the collapsing family, almost as if the building were actors, acting out that part of the story. Giving something a symbolic of a metaphorical dimension is a way to have objects or scenes operate on a level that might not be present in the original footage.